The Song of Achilles by Miller Madeline

Author:Miller, Madeline [Miller, Madeline]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2012-03-06T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

I WOKE THAT NIGHT GASPING. I WAS SWEAT-SOAKED, AND THE tent felt oppressively warm. Beside me Achilles slept, his skin as damp as mine.

I stepped outside, eager for a breeze off the water. But here, too, the air was heavy and humid. It was quiet, strangely so. I heard no flapping of canvas, no jingle of an unsecured harness. Even the sea was silent, as if the waves had ceased to fall against the shore. Out beyond the breakers it was flat as a polished bronze mirror.

There was no wind, I realized. That was the strangeness. The air that hung around me did not stir, even with the faintest whisper of current. I remember thinking: if it keeps up like this we won’t be able to sail tomorrow.

I washed my face, glad of the water’s coolness, then returned to Achilles and restless, turning sleep.

THE NEXT MORNING is the same. I wake in a pool of sweat, my skin puckered and parched. Gratefully I gulp the water that Automedon brings us. Achilles wakes, draws a hand over his soaked forehead. He frowns, goes outside, returns.

“There is no wind.”

I nod.

“We will not leave today.” Our men are strong oarsmen, but even they cannot power a full day’s journey. We need the wind to take us to Troy.

It does not come. Not that day, or that night, or the next day either. Agamemnon is forced to stand in the marketplace and announce further delay. As soon as the wind returns, we will leave, he promises us.

But the wind does not return. We are hot all the time, and the air feels like the blasts off a fire, scorching our lungs. We had never noticed how scalding the sand could be, how scratchy our blankets. Tempers fray, and fights break out. Achilles and I spend all our time in the sea, seeking the meager comfort it offers.

The days pass and our foreheads crease with worry. Two weeks with no wind is unnatural, yet Agamemnon does nothing. At last Achilles says, “I will speak to my mother.” I sit in the tent sweating and waiting while he summons her. When he returns, he says, “It is the gods.” But his mother will not—cannot—say who.

We go to Agamemnon. The king’s skin is red with heat-rash, and he is angry all the time—at the wind, at his restless army, at anyone who will give him an excuse for it. Achilles says, “You know my mother is a goddess.”

Agamemnon almost snarls his answer. Odysseus lays a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“She says the weather is not natural. That it is a message from the gods.”

Agamemnon is not pleased to hear it; he glowers and dismisses us.

A month passes, a weary month of feverish sleep and sweltering days. Men’s faces are heavy with anger, but there are no more fights—it is too hot. They lie in the dark and hate each other.

Another month. We are all, I think, going to go mad, suffocated by the weight of the motionless air.

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